Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell
by Kishite no Mirror
Summary: Hybrid moviecomicverse. On the six year anniversary of Hellboy's death, a child is brought to the Bureau to be his eventual replacement. Ten years later, Hellion's about to finish what Hellboy should have. full summary in bio
1. Prologue

"**_Grandfather!"_**

**_The old man chuckled, opening his arms wide for the girl to leap into them. She was big for six years old, looking more around the age of ten, but still thin enough to be light. He sat back in his favorite chair and let the child curl up against his chest, tail wrapped tightly around his waist and her head nestled under his chin. She was doing her best to avoid damaging his neck with her small, white horns._**

"_**It's good to see you again, my dear. How are you doing in your studies?"**_

"_**They're talking about jumping me up to third grade and Caye found me a couple books on Latin that look pretty easy to understand. I wish I had someone to teach me, though."**_

_**He beamed proudly, then his face fell, "I wish I could, darling, I wish I could help you more. I wish you weren't stuck in this place."**_

"_**It's okay, grandfather, I'm managing. Now that Caye's here, I'm happy." she tilted her head up to study her grandfather's weathered face, "You look sad. What's the matter?" as she said it, she reached up and touched the edge of the elder's sorrowful eyes, "Grandfather?"**_

_**He smiled gently, "It's nothing, my dear. Just... this date has always been filled with sad memories for me."**_

_**The sat in silence for a while, the girl quietly curled up in her grandfather's lap, watching him, studying him, never once bothering to look at the beautiful study that they were seated in. This was where she always came when she saw her grandfather, to this beautifully decorated room with the gigantic empty fish tank taking up one wall. It was the only feature she could ever remember when she woke up.**_

**_A thoughtful look suddenly crossed the aged man's face and he gently tapped his granddaughter's nose, "Perhaps there is a way that I can help you." He wrapped his hand around the small pendant hanging from the child's neck, a piece of obsidian engraved with a white fist holding the hilt of a sword. "This afternoon the back gate of the orphanage will be unlocked after lunch. Just... go for a walk. It might prove enlightening."_**

"Rise 'n shine, Faye-Faye!"

"_**I believe that's Cale calling you, my dear Faith."**_

"_**Don't call me that!" she hated the name Faith. The nuns had given it to her, before her horns and her tail had grown it as a baby. She hated anything to do with the absurd thing that the nuns and the other orphanage women called their "faith" in the Lord, especially her name.**_

"Faaaaye!"

"_**Time to wake up, my dear."**_

"Grandfather!"

** November 1, 2014**

Faith unwillingly opened her eyes, then immediately shut them and tried to shield her eyes with one thin white arm against the blazing sun, "Too bright..."

A small, quiet giggle came from her left side. She barely cracked an eye open long enough to make sure it really was her favorite, blue-eyed, golden-haired angel boy before closing it again and trying to feign sleep just a little while longer. "C'mon, Faye-Faye! Wake up! It's almost noon!"

Faith gave a small groan, having no intention of getting up till well after noon. Then, suddenly, a sharp, agonizing pain shot through her had, like being struck with an old man's cane, making her sit up and face the day.

"_**Go take a walk, Faith."**_

"Okay, okay, I get it," Faith grumbled to soft, familiar voice of her ghostly grandfather, "I'm going."

"You said 'grandfather'."

"He says to go for a walk after lunch," Faith replied, swinging her legs over the edge of her small bed and jumping the last few inches to the ground. She barely glanced at the boy next to her, small, angel-faced, complete with a tuft of golden hair and bright blue eyes. Cale and Faith had met only a week ago, but they were already the best of friends, despite a three year age gap and her being an orphan. Cale's father owned the St. Mary's orphanage; Faith was an orphan living on his money. Faith was unruly and disrespectful on the best of days; Cale was obedient and calm. Faith had no family; Cale had a family that loved him. Faith was six, and ten times smarter than anyone her age; Cale was three, and ten times smarter than Faith.

"Um, Faye-Faye?" Cale asked uncertainly, running to keep up with Faith's longer strides as she moved about the small room in an effort to find a set of half-way decent clothes and her favorite horn-hiding baseball cap. "Not to be mean or anything, but you don't have a grandpa."

Faith got down on her hands and knees and began groping around under the bed next to hers for her hat, "He's not _here_." Cale didn't need to ask to know that "here" meant not alive anymore. For some reason Faith never talked about death or anything associated with it. "At least, I don't think he is," she began tossing things out from under the bed, "kinda like a guardian angel, I guess. I can only see him when I'm asleep."

"You know how crazy that sounds, right?" he ducked to avoid getting hit in the head with a fairly large algebra book.

"Yep," she finally emerged, dusting off a beaten up NASCAR racing cap. She shoved it on over the two small horns poking out of the top of her head and walked over to the huge mirror that stood next to the window. Faith, for the obvious malnutrition she had from living in the over-populated and under-funded orphanage, really was big for her age. Tall, pale, and unhealthily thin, that was Faith. But, all things considered, that was the least of her worries. More worrisome, however, were the two horns growing out of her short black hair and the long white tail wrapped several times around her thin waist. "C'mon, let's go have lunch, I'm starving."

For Faith, lunch was an unbearably long and painful ordeal on the worst of days, only made worse by the small promise given by her grandfather in the dream that morning. While the other children her age giggled and watched the rerun of Barney playing on the TV; she and Cale sat in perfect, nervous silence, neither daring to speak of what they were about to do. It wasn't as though Faith had never snuck out before, but somehow, today, it felt different, frightening. Somehow, even at the tender ages of six and three, they knew everything was about to change.

As soon as they'd cleaned their plates of the horrible gunk the nuns tried to pass for food and given their dishes to the cook, Cale and Faith quietly exited the dining hall and made their way, as stealthily as they could, out to the back yard. "See anyone?" Faith asked, peering around the corner. Cale shook his head. "Alright, let's go." It would not occur to them until years later that it was the only time in all the years that the orphanage was open that not a soul was outside in the middle of the day.

As promised, the back gate stood wide open for them. Smiling at each other, Faith and Cale made a mad dash out the gate and into the woods beyond. It was just another adventure for Faith, and a whole new one for Cale. For hours the duo were content simply wandering around, doing their best to quiz each other on the small, broken Latin that they had managed to memorize in the two days since Cale discovery of his father's old Latin books.

Finally, Faith's attention began to drift from their makeshift Latin lesson. She was famous for having a short attention span that made her seem quite dumb and that only Cale seemed able to hold, but now even that was beginning to wane. Faith wanted to know what it was that her grandfather had been talking about. Her nerves were on edge to the point that her tail had begin to erratically twitch behind her, nearly knocking Cale's feet out from under him more than once. She had done that once, when they first met. Cale had cried and cried till she offered him half of the candy bar she was eating then promptly spit it out because it tasted nasty.

She tried reaching out to the old man with her mind. Sometimes it worked, but this time he was nowhere to be found. Faith gave a disgruntled growl and hit the tree next to her with her fist. The tree shuddered, groaned, and finally dropped a large pile of leaves on the children. "Worried much?" Cale asked airily. Faith sent him a withering six-year-old death glare.

Another hour's uneventful wandering in total silence brought them to the road that ran in front of the orphanage just in time for the sun to start setting. Faith smiled, "Think they miss us yet?" Cale gave a small giggle. The nuns were so used to Faith sneaking out that they probably hadn't even noticed her absence. Cale on the other hand... "Well, we'd better get back. It's creepy out here at night."

Cale didn't miss the bitterness in his friend's voice. He gently took the older girl's hand, "You didn't really think anything was gonna happen, did you?" Faith closed her eyes and turned away. How to do explain to a three year old, even one as mature and wise as Cale, who has always had everything handed to them on a silver platter what it's like to have to deal with a lifetime of broken promises? This was why she hated her name. How could she put her faith in something that never seemed to come through for her, especially not the "God" that the nuns told them about? The one thing in the world that Faith had always trusted, always put faith in, was what her grandfather told her, the promises and prophecies he made. She fingered the pendant hanging around her neck, the one thing she had owned from the beginning, the gift that, her grandfather had once promised, would some day guide her home.

"Let's get back," Faith muttered, pulling Cale along. A moment later, a cold gust of wind lifted Faith's hat off her head and sent it skittering across the road. "Crap!" Faith let go of Cale's hand without a second thought and went chasing after it. She was forced to dive out of the way of a car and went tumbling the rest of the way across the road. "Get back here!" She dove after the hat and hit the cold cement face-first. When she scrambled back to her feet there was a long gash cutting through her eyebrow, but she didn't care. She wanted her hat back.

Cale watched, torn between concern and total amusement at the sight of his best friend. He noticed the man before she did. He tried to yell, to get her to stop, but he couldn't get the words out. Faith's hat struck the man's legs and so did she, just moments later, and effectively knocked the very stunned man to the ground. "Crap!" Faith scrambled to her feet, grabbing frantically for her hat. The last thing she needed was a human seeing her horns. Too late.

Slowly, the man took the hat from the ground and stood up, brushing it off. He looked down at the child sitting on her knees before him, staring helplessly at his hands. He studied her, taking in the pale skin, the small, sharp white horns poking out from short black hair, the long, stiffly curled tail, huge, yellow-amber eyes, finally coming to rest on the small charm hanging around her neck. Slowly, Faith stood up and bowed her head in shame. She knew what was about to happen. Shouting and screaming and running, or worse yet an "exorcism," she hated those. As Cale began running towards them, the man gave a small smile, "What's your name?"

"Faith," she answered quietly.

He smiled and held out the hat to her, "My name's John." Faith cautiously put her hat back on in complete disbelief. Who the heck was this guy? "What are you doing out here, Faith? It's getting late; you and your brother should be home."

"I should be asking you the same thing," Faith muttered, stunned at her own defiance towards a complete stranger, "And he ain't my brother, he's my best friend."

John chuckled, "Well, is there really a difference?" Faith looked back at Cale, standing petrified in the middle of the road, and slowly shook her head. She'd never thought about it before, but maybe Cale _was_ like what a brother should be. There was a brother and sister in the orphanage, but the sister gave her the creeps and the brother smelled bad. She didn't spend much time around them, but she kinda saw what they acted like. The brother looked after the sister, same as Faith did Cale. The sister helped her brother with his homework, same as Cale did for Faith. Slowly, she turned back to John and nodded.

"I guess, yeah."

John reached down and touched the pendant hanging from Faith's neck, "And where did you get this, Faith? A present from your best friend?"

"I've always had it," Faith muttered. She studied her pendant, a smooth black disk with a white fist clutching a sword hilt carved into it. Heck if she knew what it was or what it meant, but it was always comforting to have on. Like something, someone, was there with her. John quietly held out his hand to Faith. For a moment, Faith stood, completely uncertain.

"_**Go on."**_

Faith hesitantly took the offered hand and, casting a reassuring smile back at Cale, who still stood petrified in the middle of the road, "See ya later, Caye." And with that she and John turned and walked away from the orphanage, away from the only home, the only people, Faith had ever known. Most of all, she was walking away from her new best friend, the golden-haloed angel boy who had become a brother and best friend in only a week.

"_**Don't worry. You'll see him again before you think, dear granddaughter."**_

Cale Manning watched his best friend walk away, somehow unable to stop smiling. Somehow, he just _knew_ Faith was going to be happy where she was going, and he knew that he'd always be with her, too. It might take a year, maybe two, maybe ten, but once they found each other again, he knew that he and Faith would always be together. They were meant to be friends, brother and sister. He knew it from the moment he saw her sitting on the wall behind the orphanage feeding the last of her dinner to a white kitten she dubbed 'Lucky,' even before he saw her pendant.

After all, he never told Faith, never told anyone, he'd seen that little mark on Faith's pendant before. Twice, now. It was carved into the small handgun his dad always carried with him and proudly showed to his young son one night and now, as he watched, he could barely see a familiar looking clutched fist poking out from under John's jacket when the wind blew it up.

This same gust picked up Faith's hat and blew it across the road again. She barely paused and continued to walk, hand-in-hand, with John T. Myers, the man who would one day become brother, uncle, godfather, and "nanny" to the young demon.

** May 8, 2024 **

"White here."

'_Long time no see, White. Who's there with you?'_

"Just me and Gold. We... we lost the others a while back. How long's it been?"

'_Three hundred and eighty-eight days, six hours, twenty-four minutes and eight seconds... I'm sorry, kid. They were good men."_

"It's okay, boss. It was a long time ago by now."

'_Are you coming home?'_

"_**Yes, I think it is time you finally went home."**_

"Yeah, I guess we are. It'll be good to be home. It'll be a week or two, we're hitchhiking up from the Amazon and no, I don't feel like explaining how we got here, and don't you _dare_ tell Gold's dad where we are. He'll fry me up for dinner."

'_Come home soon. We've missed you two.'_

"Same here. Look, just tell Blue I love him and give Angel and Gazzy a hug for me. We'll be home soon."

"_Sure thing, White. Blue says to say hi to your guardian angel for him, whatever that means."_

A small laugh, distant and sad and amazingly warm, "He says hi back."


	2. Where We Belong

BH:_falls over_ Jeeze, school's a bitch... anyway, here's chapter 2 of Hellion. Enter Abe!

Rhane:_rolls eyes_ C'mon, BH _reads_ Dear freaking God...

William: _sigh_ I should be yelling at you for that, but I'm too tired

BH: I love the way Abe and Faith interact, it's fun to write.

**_Hellion  
_Chapter 1  
**_Where We Belong_

_And now we're ten years on  
feels like we've just begun  
never forget this is where we belong  
Everytime that we talk about moving on  
it turns into a song  
Cause together we're strong  
like the place we come from  
This is where we belong_

**May 23, 2024 **

It took all of Abraham Sapien's self-restraint not to shout or attack the two cloaked figure that had suddenly burst through the golden doors of the late Trevor Broom's study. Yes, him, shouting. Just because he never blew up at anyone did _not_ mean he didn't want to. And right now, he _really _wanted to. It had nothing to do with threats or danger; he had recognized the duo's minds long before they entered. No, he was simply stunned and more than a little angry. After all, it had been more than a year since he had last seen or heard from them, a year of tense waiting and worry.

Just over a year ago twelve B.P.R.D. agents left to Africa in search of a demon attacking the natives. Two weeks later, contact was mysteriously lost for over a year. In that time all but two agents were killed, a thirteen year old boy named Cale Manning and a fifteen year old demon girl known simply as Hellion to all but her closest friends.

"Hi Abe," Cale muttered, pushing down the hood of his cloak. His golden blonde hair, the source of his codename, had grown out of control and was now rather sloppily tied at the back of his skull, "it's been a while."

"A while?" Abe repeated calmly, setting down the books he had been picking out, and fell onto his favorite couch, "A while? We've all been worried sick about you. What happened?"

"You don't want to know," Cale muttered. As he said it, Hellion crossed the room and sat down next to Abe. Without removing her cloak she curled her legs underneath her and rested her head against the fish-man's shoulder. "She took a spear in the shoulder for me, and carried me away from the battlefield like that. She took care of me and nursed me back to health and single-handedly got us home. I'm not surprised she's exhausted."

Abe looked down at the cloaked girl, a little surprised to see her already fast asleep. With a small, loving smile Abe gently pulled Hellion onto his lap, letting her head rest against his chest, and began to gently stroke her head through the dirty fabric of her cloak. So what if she was getting too old for such treatment? "You need rest as much as she does, Cale," he admonished, "go get some sleep. I'll take care of her."

Cale smiled and nodded. He knew Abe well enough to trust him with his best friend more than any human doctor or teacher. The exhausted demon girl would not stir until at least noon... two days later. He gave a small bow and left without another word.

"Welcome home," Abe whispered, kissing the top of his charge's head, "my dear Faith."

**November 1, 2014 **

_Clutching John's hand tightly, Faith followed him through the huge gold doors. It was a study, she realized, one full of books and old relics. She looked around in awe, mouth hanging open. There was a statue of the archangel Michael (it had to be Michael, all the paintings and statues like that were of Michael) banishing a demon (probably supposed to be Lucifer) down into Hell. Bookshelves took up most of the walls, full to exploding with books on who knows what. Taking up part of one wall was something that had to be that weird "New Age" art the nuns told her to stay away from. It looked like nothing but a jumble of color, and looking at it for too long made her dizzy. She turned in the opposite direction and found herself staring, not at a wall, but what appeared to be a huge fish tank taking up the entire wall. Her legs were suddenly very weak._

_But, instead of being empty like in her dreams, there was someone in there, a someone with blue-grey skin, blue and black stripe-marks all over, webbed fingers, toes, and underarms, and gills. Faith gave a small squeak and tried to hide behind Myers when it swam up to the glass and said, in no manner of rudeness, "Hello, Faith."_

_John chuckled and gently pushed Faith forward, "It's okay, he doesn't bite. Faith, this is Abe Sapien, one of the more unique members of our weird little family. Abe, this is Faith."_

"_Hi," Faith muttered, looking at the ground uncertainly, "um..." she finally looked up at him, eyes going steely in a way only a child can manage, "what the hell are you?"_

_John made a small choking noise. Abe blinked at her for a moment before dissolving into laughter, leaving Faith wondering why she wasn't getting reprimanded. Such a question would have gotten her struck with a ruler in the orphanage. Finally, Abe manage to stop laughing and placed one webbed hand on the glass, "I'm a fish-man, as to how I ended up like that, I have no clue."_

_Faith blinked. She had been about to ask that very question. Her eyes fell on a framed scrap of paper under the glass, "Ik-thee-o Sape-ee-en," she sounded the words out carefully, trying to translate them in her mind as she did so, "Icthyo, that's part of a dinosaur's name, a fish-thing, I think. Sapien's human, or something like that. So, yeah, fish-man," she grinned, "and that date; that's when Lincoln got shot. It's in one of the history books at the orphanage." She suddenly made a face and looked up at Abe, "So your name's kinda just a bad pun?" Abe nodded and Faith smiled, "I like it."_

"_You're certainly smart for your age," Abe mused, a smile crossing his face, "only six years old and you're already learning Latin."_

"_Are you some kind of mind reader or something?" Faith asked uncertainly._

"_In fact, I am."_

"_Cool."_

**May 25, 2024 **

"Please, sir, we cannot let you through."

"On whose orders?"

"Abe's, sir. He said no one in and no one out until Hellion wakes up, not even you."

"I don't care! She's slept two days already!" Tom Manning shoved past the two stunned guards and burst into what now served as Abe's study. "Hellion!"

"Tom!" was Abe's indignant reply. He was floating in his tank, glaring out at the FBI agent, "What on earth are you thinking? She needs to rest!"

"She's had enough rest," Tom snarled, casting around for the demon girl. He found her asleep on the same couch she and Abe had occupied two days before, curled up under the safety of her battered grey cloak.

"She is a sixteen year old girl, Tom," Abe whispered harshly, "one that has endured a great trial and much suffering in the last year. I will not stand to see you treating her as you treated Hellboy in the past, especially while she is still recovering."

Tom turned to shout at the more than agitation fish-man when another voice cut him off, "It's alright, Abe. I'll be fine." He spun around. The girl that had been sleeping a moment ago now stood before him, blazing yellow eyes boring into his own. When had she gotten so tall?

"Faith..."

"I'm fine," she repeated calmly. She pushed back the hood of her cloak and, despite years of experience both with monsters and the demon before him, Tom gave a small, startled gasp. Skin that had once been only a slightly unhealthy pale tone was now caked with dirt and dried blood and her horns, once barely visible in her ebony hair, had now grown out, wrapping around her head and meeting at the base of her skull. Two new, small horns had appeared just below her hairline. "It's been a while, Manning. Wha d'ya want?"

"I want to know what the hell happened in Africa! Ten of my best men are dead! I haven't seen my son in over a year!"

Faith's eyes narrowed, "Your men were fools, Manning. They disobeyed my orders and got themselves killed, not to mention left me and Cale running for our lives for the last year. What should have been a simple assignment ended up being botched by a couple humans to arrogant and stupid to take orders from a fourteen year old demon with more experience than they'll ever have."

Manning had turned several shades of angry red during Faith's mini-speech, and was now doing his best to puff himself up enough to gain even half and inch of height over her, "How do I know you didn't kill them all yourself?" Manning knew he'd gone too fan before he even finished the sentence. Abe winced in his tank.

With a furious roar Faith grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him into Abe's aquarium hard enough to crack the glass, "I dare you to say that again, Manning! I have never raised my gun to one of my own allies and I never will; do I make myself clear you two-faced son of a bitch?" Manning nodded weakly. "Good, now get the hell out of here," and she turned and threw him out the open door.

"Faith, the glass."

Faith turned around, a guilty smile crossing her face, and looked at the large cracks in the aquarium glass, "Oops." She reached into the depths of her cloak and withdrew an old, worn out Zippo lighter. "I shouldn' ta blown up like that, but Manning's such an ass..."

"There is no doubt that Manning behaved unfairly, Faith," Abe admonished, watching with vague interest as Faith flipped open her lighter and, apparently, dumped the flame into the palm of her hand, "but you have to understand. You insisted on Cale going to Africa with you; then you all suddenly vanished without a trace. Cale is his son, Faith, his only child."

Faith pressed the small flame to the cracked glass and willed it to repair the damage, using all of her control to send small parts of the flame out to each tiny crack and fissure, melding them back together. "He's still an ass. I mean, he knows how I feel about shooting humans." The fire faded, leaving the glass perfectly repaired, "How the hell did you deal with him for twenty-five years?"

"An extraordinary amount of patience and luck," Abe replied, "Much like how we've dealt with raising you." Faith gave him a glare that could have stopped Hitler in his tracks then smiled. He was right, she had been going out of her way to cause trouble from the age of seven when she learned she could rip vault doors off their hinges and, if necessary, use them as methods of destruction and escape. The B.P.R.D. had gone through a lot of money trying to find a door that could handle Faith's immense strength. "Are you planning on telling me how you managed to end up in the Amazon?"

"Not quite sure," Faith admitted, "we stowed away on a shipping barge in Egypt, ended up in the Vatican City for a few months, that place was fun. The priests were scared to death of me till they found out I worked at the Bureau. The demon from Africa found us again; we stowed away on a train to Russia, but I ended up fighting him again. We caught another boat and ended up in Antarctica freezing our asses off, thank God for Zippo lighters, fought Jericho again. Yeah, his name's Jericho. Is it some kinda trend to give demons Biblical names or something? Anyway, we escaped the freezing-ass-cold South Pole, spent a week surfing in Australia, discovered my new horns... got attacked again... Somehow we ended up on another ship and found ourselves floating down the Amazon on a raft full of live cargo in crates. That was around the time our cell phones started working again. We never did manage to escape Jericho, though. Seemed more like he was just trying to get us moving again..." She shrugged and smiled, "I'm just happy to be home."

"Sounds like quite the adventure," Abe chuckled and pressed one of his hands to the glass.

"I don't wanna do it again," Faith replied, "it's way too much to deal with." She brought her hand out from under her cloak again; dirt and blood caked like her face, and placed it on the glass over Abe's hand, "No more grand adventures, at least until my birthday. I can't believe I'm saying this, Abe, but for a little while I don't wanna be Hellion anymore. I don't wanna chase demons and perform exorcisms and fight psycho mermaids or giant frogs, I just..."

"Want to be Faith for a little while?" Abe finished helpfully. Faith nodded. "You can't just stop being Hellion, Faith, it's your job now, your responsibility to fill the role Hellboy left when he died. But I will tell you this: in here, when it's just us, Hellion doesn't exist, and neither does the Faith that you have to play in the outside world. In here, you're nothing but yourself." It was something Abe had been telling her since the day she'd chosen, at seven years old, to join the B.P.R.D. and again when Manning had decided that she looked human enough to be sent to a public school in Newark. "That's the way it's always been, Faith, and it will always stay that way."

"Thanks, Blue," Faith whispered, closing her eyes, "I woulda' gone crazy without you."

Not long after that, Abe banished Faith to her room to get cleaned up and convince the kitchen staff to get her something to eat with the strict orders not to return until she's done both, and preferably finished her report on what happened in Africa. ("I know I'm asking for a miracle, but please try. Manning will nag you until you do.")

On the other side of the base, Cale was getting lectured by his increasingly furious (red faced) and hysterical father. He'd heard other teens complaining about what a pain it was to work for your parents, but really, what were they complaining about? Compared to working under Thomas Manning, son or not, what they had was nothing.

"Why didn't you trying to contact us!" Manning roared, slamming his fist down on the table for what had to be the twentieth time, "A whole year, Cale!"

"I tried," Cale repeated calmly for what also had to be the twentieth time, "we tried. We sent letters, tried to call you, nothing ever made it through. We even tried going indirectly through the Vatican, but we could never get any word through to you. Finally our cell phones just started working again."

"That's pretty damn hard to believe!"

"Believe it, Father. Do you think we enjoyed our little romp? That we went on a pleasure cruise? We were running for our lives." Cale sat back and waited for the final outburst. It was the normal routine, wherever Faith was involved. Tom would yell and rant and scream for a few minutes, explode, then something, usually another alarm, would allow Cale to run back to the job, and the partner, that his father had been ranting about moments before. He constantly threatened to remove his son from the Bureau ("You're too younger for this!" "She's dangerous!" etc.), but Cale knew he would never go through with it.

"She could have killed you and we never would have known!"

"She would never hurt me, Father." Cale bit down a glare.

"You may think that now, but soon enough she'll lose her temper with you, same as everyone else! She nearly put be through the fish-man's tank earlier!"

Cale rolled his eyes heavenward, "You accused her of killing the other agents, didn't you?" He gave a long-suffering sigh and leaned forward in his chair, "Dad, you _know_ she would never shoot one of her own men. White may not like humans, and she may hate working with them, but she always does everything she can to avoid having to kill them during missions."

"She's a monster, Cale!"

For the second time that day, Manning had crossed the line. "She's my sister!" Cale shouted as he jumped to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground and nearly upending the table as he did so, "She's my sister and my best friend and she should have left me behind in Africa because all I did was slow her down the entire time we were trying to get away! I'm not going to sit here and let you insult her!"

"Don't raise your voice to me!"

"Raise this," Cale snarled, holding up his middle finger as he stormed out the door just in time for the all-too-familiar "Code Red" alarm began going off. With another sigh, Cale turned in the direction of a string of colorful curses that could only come from the demon girl that served as his best friend.

They met in hall outside of Abe's study. Faith was trying (and failing miserably) to tie her still wet hair back and had forgotten her cloak, leaving Cale wondering when her unhealthily pale skin had turned pure white. "No rest for the wicked, I guess," she grumbled through the black band clenched between her teeth. Cale could only manage a weak smile. He'd just noticed how well her favorite Harley Davidson t-shirt suddenly fit. "Well," she grinned, finally managing to wrestle her hair into a semi-decent plait, and pushed the study doors open to find Abe waiting for them, "let's go kick some monster ass."


End file.
